apocalyptic_pleasures
Member
I suspect things would have looked quite a bit different outside around this time 50 yrs ago for those living near the Gulf Coast with this monster coming ashore.
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50 Years Ago...Camille
- Thread starter apocalyptic_pleasures
- Start date
Kory
Member
Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Betsy in 1965 were the storms my grandparents used to tell stories of...until Hurricane Katrina. It's weird how cyclical disasters can be. Each generation seems to deal with their own.
David in SW Blount
Member
Amazing how Camille and Katrina made landfall at essentially the same spot, albeit on different approach. Also, I think New Orleans had very few issues with Camille.
Kory
Member
Very compact storm. I wanna say the city has sustained tropical storm force winds with hurricane gusts. Some minor flooding where levees were compromised in the eastern parts of the city, but overall, it was nothing like Hurricane Betsy just 4 years prior or Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Other parts of Louisiana were hit much harder (Plaquemines Parish and Slidell area which got in the Western eyewall).
Other note, it's incredible how surge prone the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast is where both of these storms moved through. Two of the world records that were set were done in the Waveland/Bay St. Louis/Pass Christian area.
Kory
Member
There was a neat gift shop my family and I would stop at in Gulfport on our way to vacation when I was young. The U.S.S. Hurricane Camille was a boat that was washed up and planted in the sand. The property owners then opened up a gift shop attached to the washed-up boat and it became a Gulf Coast icon.
After Katrina, it no longer exists as it was severely damaged by the storm in 2005. Ironically, our last vacation out there...June 2005, just two months prior to what would become an unprecedented disaster.
After Katrina, it no longer exists as it was severely damaged by the storm in 2005. Ironically, our last vacation out there...June 2005, just two months prior to what would become an unprecedented disaster.
David in SW Blount
Member
I don't remember ever seeing that. We lived in New Orleans (Harahan) from 1981 to 1986. My favorite reason to go to the Mississippi Gulf Coast was the big wave pool at the state park in Waveland. I'm sure that's long gone and probably before Katrina. My in-laws were from Chalmette, and they had severe flood damage from Betsy and then lost their home in Katrina. Not much NOLA hurricane drama while we lived there, although we did evacuate from Hurricane Elena in 1985.
Kory
Member
I grew up in a really active period of Hurricanes for Louisiana. We evacuated when I was really young for Hurricane Georges. It ended up missing us to the east. We then evacuated for Hurricane Ivan in what would be the first contraflow test which was a nightmare. People stayed 8 hours on I-10 to get to Baton Rouge. Absolute gridlock. We did what was popular at the time as my mother worked for a hotel downtown...high rise evacuations to avoid rising waters. Luckily Ivan missed us. We almost did what we did for Ivan as Hurricane Katrina approached, but thankfully we opted to evacuate to Baton Rouge in what we thought was going to be a 2 or 3 day affair. Little did we know it would be several weeks before we'd get back to our severely damaged home.
We also had some smaller storms during that period (2002 we were hit by two storms within 3 weeks).
I know people who lost everything in Katrina and then moved to Baton Rouge to only get flooded in 2016.
I was a youngster in northern Mississippi but I remember how crazy it was even that far inland.
As someone else said, it was very compact. With the wind speeds, it was like an 80-mile wide tornado on the coast. I went to the coast ten years later and you could still see impact from the storm.
As someone else said, it was very compact. With the wind speeds, it was like an 80-mile wide tornado on the coast. I went to the coast ten years later and you could still see impact from the storm.
